I came home from Qatar and found my mother locked in a room like a prisoner—starving, weak, and completely forgotten while my husband’s family spent every dollar i sent for her care

*crunch… tack… crunch.*

Barnaby walked beside me, his paws striking the stone in synchronized cadence.

Admiral Mercer walked on my right flank, his father’s chronometer watch ticking steadily on my wrist:

*tack… tack… tack.*

We stopped at the head of the black granite table, two paces from the Chief Justice’s leather throne.

I did not draw a weapon.

I reached inside my tweed jacket, pulled out the thick, faded blue vellum envelope containing the original 1944 Mercer Sovereign Charter, and slammed it flat atop the Chief Justice’s sixty-billion-dollar Swiss conveyance deed:

THUD.

The heavy granite table seemed to absorb the blow with a dull, subterranean groan:

“Look at the vellum, Arthur,” Elena said softly:

“Look at line four of the master title patent.”

Chief Justice Arthur Vance’s face calcified into an apocalyptic, curdled shade of un-cured limestone.

His pupils dilated until the slate-gray of his irises was swallowed completely by black.